A judge ruled in favor of Hidalgo County Judge Richard F. Cortez on Tuesday in a lawsuit filed by his former opponent Tania Ramirez.
Ramirez filed a petition for an election contest on March 23, challenging the results of the March 1 Hidalgo County Democratic Primary Election, for which Cortez was declared the winner with 20,792 total votes. Ramirez received 12,265 votes, and Norma Ramirez received 8,326.
“The combination of poll closures, change in polling locations, and the unpublicized separate operation of the polling locations by the (Hidalgo County Democratic Party) and its Republican counterpart created a perfect storm of voter confusion,” the petition said. “Voters who had expected to vote at certain previously advertised locations found them closed. Others went to polling locations, adorned with ‘Vote Here’ and similar messaging, only to find that they needed to go to another location because that location was dedicated to the other party.”
The petition also said Hidalgo County normally has 88 polling locations open on Election Day. On March 1, there were 60 polling locations open — 42 were Democratic locations and 18 Republican locations.
Ramirez argued that voting for residents of Western Hidalgo County was made more difficult because there were no polling locations in Alton, La Joya, Palmview, and Peñitas.
“It was the closure of the voting locations on Election Day,” Ramirez said about filing the suit following the ruling made by visiting Judge Rogelio “Roy” Valdez. “As the public knows, they did shut down more than half of the polling sites for this past election.”
“The other thing was that after everything concluded, there was a video that was sent to us about ballots in general being mishandled by the elections department,” Ramirez continued. “We do have that video, which also was presented in the case today. The other thing was also there were a lot of people complaining about the actions that were taken by the mailing ballot board and the procedure of curing the ballots. That, and a combination of everything was what brought us to file the lawsuit.”
Following closing statements made by attorneys representing Cortez and Ramirez, who represented herself along with attorney Jonathan Muñoz, Judge Valdez determined that there was no wrongdoing by the county elections department. He described what happened as a “perfect storm,” resulting in many mistakes being made.
“I find that no illegal votes were counted in this election,” Valdez said Thursday. “I also find that no election officer or official involved in the administration of this election prevented any eligible voter from voting. I furthermore find that no election officer or official involved in the administration of this election failed to count any legal votes.”
He also found no fraud of any sort, including election fraud.
“I do find that there was numerous mistakes made during the election as happens in a lot of elections,” Valdez continued. “Although I think the contested counsel is right, there was somewhat of a perfect storm. There were new election laws, Democratic chairmen changed at the last minute or shortly before the election.”
He also said the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and election judges who were trained and quit before the election resulted in errors.
“In any event, there were mistakes made during the election process,” Valdez said. “I’m going to find, as a matter of fact, that none of that would change the outcome of this election regarding the county judge’s race. There was significant mistakes, but none that I feel that if the election was redone would change the election.”
Following the judge’s ruling, Ric Godinez, one of the attorneys who represented Cortez, said that he and his client were very pleased with the result.
“We always felt that this was a free and fair election,” Godinez said. “Certainly, there were mistakes made. It’s always a problem when you close polls.”
Godinez said that COVID-19, the new Senate Bill 1, and redistricting were all contributing factors to mistakes being made during the election.
“Regardless of all that, we believe the party and the elections department had a fair opportunity for everybody to go vote,” Godinez said. “That’s really all we can ask for.”
Despite the judge’s ruling against her, Ramirez said she respected the outcome.
“This case was mostly about the material effect that all those mistakes had on the outcome of the election,” Ramirez said. “Technically, the judge did find that there were multiple mistakes, as he mentioned, in this election. However, he did not find that all of those mistakes combined added to a material effect to change the outcome of the election.”
“We put up a good fight,” she continued. “I’m a fighter. I stand for the rights of our people, especially to protect the people of Hidalgo County. I will continue to do that as an attorney, as a person, as a philanthropist. I want to thank all the people that voted for me.”
